# Old Miss Hatchard — Summer character guide

> Old Miss Hatchard in Summer by Edith Wharton.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Miss Hatchard

**First appearance:** 0000-i

## Snapshot

The crutch-borne spinster who owns the library, sponsors the festivities, and speaks for North Dormer's sense of its own historic importance.

## Who they are

Miss Hatchard presides over the village's Associations, its daguerreotypes, its Home Week, and the library she lends her key to without asking the librarian. Frail, well-meaning, and quietly proprietary, she is the town's institutional memory and its chief dispenser of small favors and small slights. Her benevolent management of Charity's life, from school plans to library rules, is one of the soft pressures the novel quietly indicts.

## Relationships

### [Charity Royall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/charity_royall)

_social_

Old Miss Hatchard is a wealthy, elderly patron who employs Charity briefly and represents the old New England gentility.

### [Charity Royall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/charity_royall)

_social_

Old Miss Hatchard is a wealthy, elderly patron who employs Charity briefly and represents the old New England gentility.

### [Charity Royall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/charity_royall)

_social_

Old Miss Hatchard is a wealthy, elderly patron who employs Charity briefly and represents the old New England gentility.

## In the story

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/chapters/i)

A prominent villager, great-niece of Honorius Hatchard, who reminds Charity of her origins from the Mountain.

### [II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/chapters/ii)

Attempts to arrange Charity's education and later appoints her as librarian.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/chapters/iii)

Visited the library after Harney's report and found it locked; plans to hire a trained librarian.

### [IV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/chapters/iv)

Mentioned as the one who might replace Charity and who was influenced by Harney's comments.

### [XII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/chapters/xii)

Hosts the sewing afternoons for Old Home Week; drops allusions to her cousin Harney, which deeply affect Charity.

### [XIII](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/chapters/xiii)

Present in the front row, signaling during the event.

### [XIV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/chapters/xiv)

Attends the dance and asks Harney to dance with other girls.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters/old_miss_hatchard
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/summer_se/characters